The question that has so far gone unanswered in this series, then, is how will we learn in the future?

Its easy for old farts like me to assume everybody will learn the way we did, but thats unlikely simply because the underlying assumptions are changing. When I was a kid human labor was cheap and technology was expensive. Today technology is cheap and getting cheaper, while human labor is expensive and becoming more so. Yet our model of education technology is still so defined by that remembered Apple IIe in the corner of the classroom that is it difficult for many to imagine truly pervasive educational technology.

This is in large part because there is no way that Apple IIe or any PC is going to somehow expand to replace books and teachers and classrooms. For education, the personal computer is probably a dead end. Its not that we wont continue to have and use PCs in schools, but the market and intellectual momentum clearly lie elsewhere.

So forget about personal computers: the future of education probably lies with digital games.